#132 Abso-fucking-lutely Terrible: Me, JS and MOW (Continued)

If you didn't read the first part, you can read it here.  It contains the beginning of this interesting saga.

Continuing on.

After a while, I was starting to sound like a madman trolling hater on crack.  I took every opportunity to make either a subtle shot at Mr. Samuels or outright declare what I thought of his work.  Then someone told me to dial it down.

To be more precise, they said this.

"Let it go. You are starting to come off as nutty as Justin by going on ad nauseum about him. You've made your point. Move on."


And I had to agree with them.  They were right.  I was getting to worked up over it.  I was consumed by the rivalry, and I started to understand why.  Mr. Samuels represented everything that I disliked.  He was someone who felt he was better than everyone else and deserved to shine brighter than everyone else.  He didn't listen no matter what you tried to tell him and just ignored solid advice.  In essence he was the anti-me.

Mr. Samuels(L) and Me(R).

After a while, I let it go and Mr. Samuels sort of faded out into Amazon Studios obscurity.  I had soon forgotten about him as my own projects became my primary focus.

Until today.

Mr. Samuels has posted his first foray into the field of fiction.  Because I hate to see anyone fail, I will post the links for it and you can check it out, but before you do that, there are some things that you need to understand.  Now this is all a matter of personal opinion and nothing more...

First the link.  MOW

I figured I would give this a shot.  It's been a while and a lot of people can change their focus in a few short months.  I know I surely did.  

What I found inside those pages were some of the worst attempts at writing, I have seen in a long time.  The first two pages were astoundingly bad.  Immediately in the first paragraph was the detention and waterboarding followed by subsequent murder of a cardinal rule of writing.

Don't believe me.  Here is an excerpt from the first page.

"Selene stands before the gods.  She looks at the beautiful pillars in Olympus.  Soon this will be hers.  She's finally prepared the rites which will allow her and Hades to defeat Zeus and take over.  What can Zeus do now?  Zeus sits  on his throne furious, yet Selene seems unaffected by it.  Zeus knows taking Selene down will not be easy.  At his side sits his daughter Athena and his son Hermes.  "You vile sorceress Selene.  It was you who opened the gates of hell." barks Zeus in his loud thunderous voice.  Indeed she did.  Selene desires this throne room for herself.  She came up with a plan with Hades assistance to claim it."

I tried to go on, but I couldn't.  If the first page was this terrible, how did the rest of the book fair.  Luckily the ability to read a sample was an advantage, because I'd be pissed if I actually spent money on this.  If it were rewritten  without giving away so much of the information away in the first page...it might be better.  Then again when it comes to Mr. Samuels, there's no way to tell.

It wouldn't be fair to call the whole thing a trainwreck, but if you can tell just from reading the first page of what the rest of the book is like then....

This is what I forsee

Mr. Samuels has great ideas, but great ideas does not a screenwriter/novelist make.  Writing a bunch of words on paper don't work either.  Telling a story is an artform and is not the sort of thing that can be faked.  I put a lot of time working with Ed, to get Eiko ready for publication, and while Ed, did provide a lot of assistance, the lions share was on me.  MOW was self-published and it shows.  There was obviously no editorial work done on this before publication, but It never seems as though Mr. Samuels would listen to an editor anyway.  He never seems to listen to anyone.

Again I have gotten worked up, while Mr. Samuels gets as cool as a cucumber...but while he ignores the advice of others (as I am certain he will) I will continue to absorb as much advice as possible.  The great divide will continue to show.  I've never lost my ability to listen and learn and that is the difference between someone who dreams to be great, and someone who works to be great.

The greatest disservice would be to not tell Mr. Samuels what is wrong with his book.  If you feel that it has a solid story then tell him, but if you are an avid reader and see the glaring flaws in it, be sure to let him know.  His peers cannot tell him anything, so maybe his fans will.